Revealed: NSA Hacked into Email, Phones of Latin American Presidents

Revealed: NSA Hacked into Email, Phones of Latin American Presidents

'Secret program allowed agents to access the entire communications network of president and staff, including telephone, Internet and social network exchanges.'

by

Jon Queally, staff writer

In the latest reporting by journalist Glenn Greenwald on the U.S. National Security Agency's international surveillance programs, a news story on a Brazilian news show on Sunday night reported that the agency has used its powers to infiltrate the communication systems of presidents in both Mexio and Brazil.

Greenwald, listed as a co-contributor for the Journo O Globo's Sunday evening show Fantastico, said that documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the NSA accessed the email accounts and telephones of both President Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

"Fantastico" showed what it said was an NSA document dated June 2012 displaying passages of written messages sent by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who was still a candidate at that time. In the messages, Pena Nieto discussed who he was considering naming as his ministers once elected.

A separate document displayed communication patterns between Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her top advisers, "Fantastico" said, although no specific written passages were included in the report.

Both documents were part of an NSA case study showing how data could be "intelligently" filtered, Fantastico said.

The NSA said in the document that it was trying to better understand [Rousseff's] methods of communication and interlocutors using a program to access all Internet content the president visited online.

Rousseff, who is due to make a state visit to Washington in October, held a working meeting to study the revelations in the Globo report, the channel said.

"If these facts prove to be true, it would be unacceptable and could be called an attack on our country's sovereignty," Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo said.

The NSA program allows agents to access the entire communications network of the president and her staff, including telephone, Internet and social network exchanges.

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